On Why the Dem Senators are voting for nominees

So I am seeing a lot of folks on social media pissed off about Dem Senators voting for some of the nominees and not others.

The Dem Senate committee realized this was going to happen a while back. When the first nominations started to trickle out, in fact — and the reaction they had at the time was uniformly horrible — matching what many of us felt.

A few weeks back, they started to note (in the lead up to the big dem party meeting where strategy for dealing with the administration was decided on) that things were so overwhelmingly bad, that they were going to have to “marshal their capital”.

That is, pick their battles. Figure out which ones to carry their cross for. This is especially true for Dem senators who are up for re-election over the next two years. All of whom are currently stressing out because the Republican party took over the country, and want blood.

So, basically, they are scared of losing their power. Which, in the Senate, is a *huge deal* as the Senate is structured around the folks who have been there the longest having the most power and influence.

Which is needing change, because, really, it gets in the way of them doing their jobs, which is to be concerned with their constituents first.

At this point, though, this is the basis of their decision making, as if they do defy the Regressives on everything, then the Regressives will enable the so-called nuclear option, which shuts down the possibility for stopping the SCOTUS nominee, which is the sole and utter goal.

Of course, this is predicated on the notion that the Regressives won’t do that, which is seriously unlikely as they know all too well that they did in fact do that last session.

So it is a game of chicken, and while the game is about SCOTUS, the chessboard is filled with monsters and nightmares that are all in play before then.

There is another factor at play, though, and that factor is making sure that all the Senators are on the same page. Leadership wants to make sure they all understand they need to toe the line, because when it comes time to block the SCOTUS nomination, and one’s coming up like Ross (who is being tapped because he will control the Census — and *never* underestimate the importance of that) or DeVos, they absolutely must have all of them in lockstep in order to force the needed three votes from the Regressive side.

This is being built up in the press as well — with one particular pick being singled out for being utterly disgusting, thus creating the impression that “of a batch of bad apples, this is the least bad apple” and so suddenly the others become less icky.

None are acceptable from the list already prepared, though, and the Regressive party absolutely will invoke the nuclear option if more than one is blocked — and they have a plan for it, as well.

The Dem senate knows this, and is depending on the power of the collective will to act as a shield to those they are going to have defect if they make the appropriate deals to support efforts of these few Republicans (all of whom are at risk as well).

So, it comes down to strategy on their part. They know that they cannot afford to give up the SCOTUS nomination, and yes, they want some payback, but payback is *way* down the line, even if it does play well in the media.

Now, they get we are furious about this. Unlike their Regressive counterparts, they generally tend to listen to us, since we have proven to be rather willing to cut their knees out from beneath them in elections.

But what they do not have control over is our collectively taking over the local governments, which will destroy the power base of the Regressive party in terms of potential candidates.

So while we can criticize them freely, doing so isn’t going to have much of an impact on their process — and far too many of the Cabinet nominess will get their jobs — in no small part because the Dems enacted a partial nuclear option in the last session which outlawed filibusters against this level of nominees.

Simple majority is all that is needed for the entire cabinet to be installed. A simple majority that the Regressive party *already has*. In other words, until the SCOTUS nomination process, Dem Senators can do nothing to stop them from being confirmed *except* get three Regressive party members to side with them.

Nothing. There simply are not enough of them to be able to do so.

THink about that for a few moments.

Even if every single Dem votes no, it means nothing They have no power except as a complete block, and the effort to pry away Regressive party members means giving up on things they stand for, inevitably.

So, when we condemn them, we are actually playing into the Regressive party hands in the next election, unless we can get our collective shit together and make sure that local (state, city, county) elections in two years go our way.

Not kidding, not exaggerating, and not giving a damn about party anything,

This is the reality we have to face right now. And it isn’t of the making of the Democratic Party or the Green Party or whatever.

It is the making of those people who have not been involved in Party politics at the local level, trusting people to act on their behalf and merely voting.

Voting is the result of all that other effort — a right that is interdependent on other rights, like the right to meet together for political purposes.

A right too few have been exercising, yet too many condemn the few for doing…